Mammothfest director Steve Dicksons stance on “etiquette” and bands applying to play a festival

There are more bands out there than most realise so competition has never been more difficult.

Firstly consider how many bands there are in your local area, consider then that this is likely to be the same in most other towns, cities and everywhere else in the UK and then consider this is the same worldwide and what do you get? A shit load of bands, far too many for any festival to incorporate all!

I have the pleasure of also working for Terrorizer magazine and I see the traffic that comes in to us daily. The editors are incredible, they have the often thankless task of trying to go through everything and decide what bands should make the mag, cover mount CD or website and undoubtedly not everyone gets it right, it’s impossible when there is so much music but like us at Mammothfest and many other publications, we are all doing our best.

So where do all these bands fit in the industry? There is simply no demand for thousands of festivals or magazines etc. yet there are thousands and thousands of bands so not all get the exposure they feel they deserve for all their hard work and let’s face it, bands work bloody hard.

So this does not feel fair to them when they have spent hours writing and recording, saving money to pay for the recordings, doing over time in a hate fuelled job to fund their latest EP to then find no one is giving them any attention.

This frustration can bring certain people to a boiling point and understandably so but this does not warrant abusing those they are in contact with, this must stop.